In my recent article I talked about the future of Unified Communications and the concept of UC 3.0, I talked about a refreshed framework for comparing unified communications solutions. The basis of UC 3.0 is about the experience, notably the user experience (UX), team experience (TX), customer experience (CX) and ultimately the business experience (BX) needs to be considered before you attempt to compare vendor UC solutions.
2019 Edition Out Now
Getting to Know Microsoft UC & Collaboration in 2019
With the concept of UC 3.0 in mind, let's begin our comparison with one of the best-known players in the communication industry: Microsoft.
For meetings, collaboration and productivity, Microsoft has been a strong enterprise player for a number of years. Microsoft started in the meeting space with Lync, which eventually became "Skype for Business." Although Skype for Business is being phased out and replaced with Microsoft Teams, there are still countless companies using the tool today.
The creation of Microsoft Teams helps Microsoft to enter the world of Unified Communications 3.0, by combining user experience with customer experience solutions (contact centre), business experience (management and administration), and team experience (collaboration).
It's not just an audio conferencing and instant messaging tool. Microsoft Teams is a fully immersive component of the Microsoft Office ecosystem - the productivity suite that has made Microsoft so popular throughout the years.
There are approximately 1.2 billion users around the world using some manner of Office product. Office 365 now has 155 million monthly active users (MAU) and is gaining new users at over 3 million seats per month according to this source.
Microsoft Teams brings company tools for collaboration, communication, customer service, and administration together in the same single-pane-of-glass environment. It's no wonder that:
- Microsoft Teams is the fastest growing Microsoft app ever created.
- The tool spans across 41 languages and 181 markets.
- Office 365 saw a 35% growth in constant currency over the last year.
Most importantly, Microsoft Teams is becoming consistently more impressive.
Over the last 6 months, 100 new features were added to the environment, including blurred backgrounds on video calls, frontline worker services and more.
Collaboration and Productivity: Connected
Microsoft has emerged as a leader in the team collaboration environment specifically because of its acceptance of UC 3.0. Simply put, Microsoft doesn't just offer collaboration as an add-on to your existing environment. Instead, Teams is a natural component of your existing Microsoft ecosystem.
Microsoft Teams allows companies to hold scheduled and impromptu meetings, video conferences and calls, while they have access to the tools and services they rely on each day. They can start a conversation from a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet, or bring PowerPoint presentations into their meetings. There's even the option to connect with Outlook calendar to ensure that everyone is available for a conversation.
Of course, it's not just the connection between Microsoft Office 365 and Teams that makes the Microsoft offering so special. Microsoft also has a strong approach to the communication and business management worlds. Company leaders can organise their teams into different groups, track actions through Activity tabs, and customise their environment to suit their needs.
The Microsoft Teams adoption rate has been astronomical. Teams entered the industry in preview format by the end of 2016 and launched fully in early 2017. Although initially, companies were concerned about the idea of a replacement for Skype for Business (particularly in the Enterprise), many of those worries have quickly evaporated. After all, Teams today doesn't just have feature parity with Skype for Business (Online edition only as I write this); it can do so much more. Some Enterprises however are resisting the move to Teams due to recent investments in perpetual licences and not wanting to move to a pay monthly model.
Increasingly, companies are beginning to see Microsoft Teams not just as a replacement for Skype for Business, but as a crucial component of their complete UC ecosystem.
As of March 2019, Microsoft Teams has more than 500,000 organisations reliant on the platform - compared to Cisco's collaboration portfolio, which serves around 300 million people around the world. It’s tricky to compare numbers like for like on this basis, however based on some simple math, I’d estimate that there are already more than 50 million Teams users out there. If Cisco convert a good portion of their 130 million Webex users to Webex Teams, then we’re going to see an exciting battle for top spot over the next few years.
As I said, it's difficult to get a like-for-like comparison, since Microsoft never shares the number of individual users using Microsoft Teams. However, it's fair to say that Microsoft Teams is bigger than the alternative offerings from Facebook and Google (Workplace and Hangouts). It's also gaining on other productivity solutions like Slack too.
For many people, Microsoft Teams represents the more enterprise-focused approach to collaboration that Slack simply can't provide. It delivers the security, administration and productivity tools that Slack lags behind on. Most importantly, Microsoft also has the benefit of being an existing part of many current communication and productivity networks already. It's hard to find a business that hasn't at least considered using Microsoft Office in their stack.
Getting to Know Cisco UC & Collaboration in 2019
Microsoft certainly has heritage in the collaboration and enterprise communication environment. However, Cisco isn't a new player either. Cisco has been the heart and soul of communication for many businesses for years. The company has been delivering communications since 1984.
